Despite 44-game Skid, Prairie View Fights On

November 20, 1994|By Ira Berkow, New York Times News Service.

PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas — The day embraced all the essentials of a grand and glorious homecoming football game for small Prairie View A & M.

The sun was shining brightly in southeastern Texas. The halftime show featured Prairie View's renowned marching band, typically bold and brassy. The stands of Blackshear Stadium were filled to capacity with 6,000 alums, students and supporters.

But when the high-stepping band departed, when the Prairie View players in their gleaming gold helmets and purple jerseys returned to resume play, half the fans had already departed or were flocking to the aisles as though responding to an emergency call.

The score was 42-14 in favor of visiting Tarleton (Texas) State, and the situation was about to get worse.

This was last weekend, when the Prairie View Panthers would go down 70-20, suffering their 44th straight loss and earning a share of the NCAA record for football futility first set by Columbia from 1983 to 1989.

"It hurts to walk out for the second half and see everybody leaving-we hate it," said Michael Porter, a 5-foot-8-inch, 200-pound sophomore running back from Davis High School in Houston.

"But we've grown accustomed to it. Happens every home game. At other colleges, football players walk around campus, and people respect them. Here, you get more respect being in the band."

While Columbia-which, like Prairie View, doesn't offer athletic scholarships-has a 4-3-1 record this season, the Panthers haven't won a game since Oct. 28, 1989, the only victory in its 1-9 season. The Panthers hadn't had a winning season since 1967, when it was 5-4.

Saturday, the Panthers played Jackson State in Jackson, Miss., one of the stronger teams in the Division I-AA Southwestern Athletic Conference, which is composed of historically black schools.

The Prairie View players know they face the melancholy prospect of breaking an embarrassing collegiate record.

After the Tarleton State loss, Coach Ron Beard said what has become a kind of litany for him: "They beat us on offense, they beat us on defense and they were more disciplined." He expressed similar sentiments after the 51-0 loss to Arkansas-Pine Bluff, the 66-0 loss to Grambling and the 69-10 loss to Alcorn State.

"We work hard in practice, and everyone wants to win-most of the players really think we can win every Saturday," said Alphonse Provo, a senior linebacker who has played in 42 of the team's losses, "and then we always seem to do something to shoot ourselves in the foot."

Porter worries about something else.

"I didn't win a game in high school, either," he said. "We lost 30 in a row. I hope I'm not a jinx."

Said Jerrold Crowder, a senior linebacker and perhaps the best player on the team: "Those numbers about losing streaks are for other people to talk about. I don't see us as a team that's lost 44 games in a row. I see it that we lost last week. If you think 44 in a row, that's depressing. It'll make you want to quit. If you lost 44 games of anything, you'd want to give up. But I've never been a quitter. My mom always told me, `If you quit the first time, it makes quitting the second time that much easier.' "

Beard, the hefty head man for all but the first two of the 44 losses, could evince a semblance of humor after the Tarleton game. As he walked into a room in the field house for a news conference, he told the reporters, "OK, fire away-no, forget that."

And while there are rumblings from alumni about replacing the coach, many others are understanding of his plight.

First and foremost, Prairie View is the only school in its conference that doesn't offer athletic scholarships.

None of the players were recruited by any other school. Many were second- and third-string on their high school teams. Some didn't play high school football at all.

As for two of their best players, both grew and got stronger in college: Crowder, who was injured and didn't play his senior year of high school in Houston, and defensive lineman Augustus Belser, who played only his last year in high school and was then "small" at 230 pounds. He now weighs 280.

Ninety-five percent of the 5,600 students at Prairie View have qualified for some kind of financial aid, including most of the football players. So all of the football players must be serious students first-if they don't keep up their grades they lose the aid-athletes second.

And Beard and his four coaches all must teach other classes, unlike many other coaches who just have football responsibilities. Beard also coaches the men's and women's golf teams and teaches six classes. In his spare time, he chalks down the lines on the football field before practice.

But while the Panthers play under obvious handicaps, not everything is second-class.

"Our equipment and uniforms are the best," said Douglas Fowlkes, the offensive line coach. "Our guys wear Nike and Pony shoes and Air-Max helmets, just like Notre Dame or Michigan. That's not the problem. The problem is, we don't have any Tyrone Wheatleys."